Biotech Babies

Suzanne is a forty-year-old mother of two who recently
attended an Evangelical women’s Bible study in a suburb of Chicago. At this
particular gathering the topic was infertility. The church had brought in two
guest speakers. One spoke of how she and her husband had spent years
unsuccessfully trying to conceive before they decided to adopt. The other
related that she and her husband also had experienced fertility complications
but that, after many years of trying, they were finally blessed with a child of
their own. She had been so overcome with gratitude at having given birth that
she was now serving as a surrogate mother of twins for another couple desperate
for children. Both women were hailed as models of how to turn private
sufferings into public goods, and as strong Christian witnesses for how to face
one’s own infertility with courage and grace. That response suggests that we’ve
failed to reflect deeply enough about the moral significance of reproductive technologies.

Infertility is a painful reality for many couples, yet most
Christian congregations have been reticent in response. Meanwhile, assisted
reproductive technologies remain increasingly popular options for infertile
couples desperate to conceive. Historically, the Judeo-Christian tradition has
held fertility in high regard, taking seriously the command to “be fruitful and
multiply.” But the modern advent of reproductive technologies now forces us to
ask what boundaries or lines should be drawn.

The modern-day fertility industry can trace its origins back
to 1884, when a doctor in Philadelphia inserted the thawed sperm of a stranger
into a woman who nine months later gave birth to a child whom she believed was
created from her husband’s sperm. This incident would give rise to the now
widely accepted phenomenon of anonymous conception, perfected a century later
through in vitrofertilization (IVF) when Sir Robert Edwards engineered
the birth of Louise Brown, the world’s first test-tube baby. While Louise was
the product of her mother’s egg and father’s sperm, it would not be long before
conception via third-party donor egg or sperm, or both, and the eventual
implementation of the embryo into a third-party surrogate. In short, the
emergence of assisted reproductive technologies has allowed us to alter forever
the idea of procreation, with sex no longer a prerequisite for reproduction.

Yet while these technologies had originally resulted from a
purely scientific interest in the problem of infertility, they soon became the
center of a lucrative enterprise. Their most common form relies heavily on the
buying and selling of eggsoften euphemistically called “egg donation.” Young
women, commonly on university campuses, are lured by the prospects of receiving
as much as tens of thousands of dollars for their eggs, paid for by affluent
infertile or homosexual couples eager to have a child.

This emergent baby-producing industry has dark sides. The
process of removing eggs from women is medically questionablethere have been
no long-term scientific studies done on the health risks involved, and the most
serious risk, ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS), already shows links to various
cancers and can in rare cases even lead to death. There are also emotional
risks involved, to the egg donor, the couple on the receiving end, and the
child conceived.

The practice of surrogacy at its simplest takes place by
inserting sperm into a fertile woman who is able to serve as the child’s birth
and biological mother. The story of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar shows us that
this is an ancient practice. A second method, increasingly more common, is
known as “gestational surrogacy,” in which a previously ­created embryo is
­implanted inside the surrogate mother, who can then deliver a child not
genetically related to her. According to recent data from the American Society
for Reproductive Medicine, more than a thousand children were born through
surrogacy in 2011. That number indicates an almost 100 percent increase from
the 530 babies reported born in 2004. While the psychological, emotional, and
physical challenges of gestational surrogacy are similar to those of IVF and
anonymous sperm donation, because this method is relatively new, we have little
data on children born this way.

In his 1972 essay “Making Babiesthe New Biology and the Old
Morality,” Leon Kass, the distinguished physician and ethicist, cautioned that
scientists were then on the cusp of creating children outside the womb. Just
how it would affect these children would have to be determined years later.
Sensing that all might not be well, Kass warned that “infertility is a
relationship as much as a conditiona relationship between husband and wife,
and also between generations too. More is involved than the interests of any
single individual.” In many discussions of infertility, the emphasis will be
typically centered on the deep longing for a child. Yet, Kass notes, this can
never be a one-directional matter: We must also give consideration to the
children and their desires, their rights, their pain, and their suffering.

The unregulated aspect of the baby-producing industry (which
of course also includes the more common use of anonymous sperm to impregnate
fertile women) makes it difficult to fully grasp or analyze the experience of
children created from third-party reproduction. In 2010, the Institute for
American Values, a nonpartisan think tank, released the report “My Daddy’s Name
Is Donor: A New Study of Young Adults Conceived Through Sperm Donation.” Their
data, while not focused exclusively on gestational surrogacy, provides a
starting point for understanding the experiences of these children.

Looking at children produced through artificial
insemination, the report found that “sixty-five percent of donor offspring
agree, ‘my sperm donor is half of who I am.’” Similarly, it found that “donor
offspring are more likely to agree, ‘I don’t feel that anyone really
understands me.’” This has typically led this population to struggle with their
mothers and their social fathers, with over half of the respondents agreeing
with the statement “I have worried that if I try to get more information about
or have a relationship with my sperm donor, my mother and/or the father who
raised me would feel angry or hurt” and another 70 percent agreeing that “I
find myself wondering what my sperm donor’s family is like.”

This raises questions about reproductive technology that
currently remain unanswered in our public policy: Is it right or even lawful
for parents to deny children information about their genetic parents? Should
sperm and egg banks be required to keep records of the individuals who donate or
sell their eggs and sperm? Should there be a limit on how many times anyone can
sell eggs or sperm? Why do we make a legal distinction between the selling of
organs, which is banned, and that of sperm and eggs, which is not? To date,
little public-policy attention has been given to these questions, and the theological
debate that exists has largely remained in the classroom or in the
confessional.

Today a successful IVF cycle can cost as much as $100,000.
Surrogacy pushes this cost higher when the costs of nine months of medical
treatment are combined with the fees paid to the surrogate mother. And while
anonymous sperm conception is relatively inexpensive, egg donation is not.
Moreover, the exchange of money between the donor and the recipient inevitably
carries with it the feeling that children are being bought and sold. This
commodification of life is something that donor children themselves seem to be
lamenting. When asked, 45 percent of sperm-donor-conceived children agreed that
“it bothers me that money was exchanged in order to conceive me.”

How are we to respond to couples who so desperately seek “a
child of their own”? For Christians, the notion of a child of one’s own
is both shortsighted and dangerously individualistic. When parents choose to
pursue third-party reproductive technologies, an automatic asymmetry is
deliberately established. IVF, surrogacy, or anonymous gamete donationthese
all become individual projects, rather than a joint collaboration between both
spouses as co-creators of their future child.

Even more worrisome is the potential objectification of the
child who is so desperately longed for by the mother or father. As Gilbert
Meilaender observes, as we remove the creation of new life further and further
from the natural reality of male and female sexual union, children become “our
product, our project, or our possession.” Years later, when the child learns
the details of his conception, he may react against the idea of how great an
effort had to go into it. In an age in which people are as transient as they
are now and when even local family units drift apart, biological ties remain
unalterable. We ignore them at great risk of harm to these children.

We are still only in the nascent stage of reproductive
technology. To this point, we have proceeded speedily in the hope of rectifying
infertility, which is on its surface a goal worthy of joy and celebration. Yet
the stories offered to us by the children conceived from these methods must
give us pause for more reflection. It is often remarked by parents that their
children become their greatest teachers in life. If this is the case, then the
lessons being taught by the children conceived via IVF, anonymous sperm and egg
conception, and surrogacy is one that urges caution.

Jennifer Lahl is the founder and president of the Center
for Bioethics and Culture and producer of the documentary film Eggsploitation.
Christopher White is the director of education and programs at the Center for
Bioethics and Culture.